Yugi, his friends, and Mai enter the castle and are confronted by Bandit Keith. Joey wants revenge on him for trapping them in the cave, but Keith blows him off and tells him to watch the duel about to take place—Seto Kaiba versus Maximillion Pegasus! Kaiba plans to use his Duel Disk system to gain an advantage over Pegasus, but is horrified when Pegasus only agrees to use it if the soulless Mokuba operates it! (Yugi and Bakura are shocked by this as well.) Giving in to Pegasus, Kaiba refuses to use the system and duels normally.
At first, the duel goes very well for Kaiba—he's able to destroy Pegasus's Parrot Dragon and stop his traps. However, just like with Yugi, Pegasus was toying with Kaiba. He stops playing around and instantly dismantles his strategy, stealing his Blue-Eyes White Dragon, powering up his Dark Rabbit, and stopping Kaiba's Crush Card in its tracks.
This episode contains examples of:
- Batman Gambit: Kaiba strategizes a combo attack of Saggi The Dark Clown and the Crush Card to wipe out Pegasus' entire deck and put the odds in his favor. But Pegasus, thanks to the power of his Millenium Eye, anticipates the move and creates a perfect counterattack: Deliberately buffing up Saggi's attack points with "Negative Energy" so it can no longer host the Crush Card, then kill him with his strengthened Dark Rabbit.
- Big Word Shout: In the Japanese version, Pegasus shouts "STOP!" in English as Kaiba goes to summon his Blue-Eyes. The dub changes it to "STOP RIGHT THERE!" to better fit the mouth flaps.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Kaiba geared up his deck with powerful monsters with over 1500 attack points. So it plays to Pegasus' advantage when he plays "Prophecy" and he can easily guess that Kaiba's next card has over 2000 attack points. Not only is Kaiba's card over 2000 attack points, its Kaiba's famed Blue-Eyes White Dragon. This comes back to bite Kaiba hard in more ways than one come the next episode.
- Foreshadowing: Dub only, but Pegasus mentions that if Kaiba loses, his soul would join Mokuba's in bondage.
- Internal Reveal: Yugi and the others learn of Pegasus taking Mokuba's soul. This is what makes Yugi realize why Kaiba resorted to his life or death ploy to win their duel.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Kemo, the same person who wrongly disqualified a duelist who had his star chips and cards stolen from him, and kidnapped Mokuba, still wasn't wrong to not allow Tea, Tristan, and Bakura into Pegasus' castle since they aren't Duelists and have no Star Chips.
- Just Toying with Them: Pegasus doesn't even take Kaiba seriously, letting him score an early lead as Rude Kaiser takes out Toon Alligator and Parrot Dragon (with the aid of Mesmeric Control) before dismantling all of his strategies.
- Oh, Crap!: Kaiba gets a huge one when Pegasus plays a card that lets him swipe one of Kaiba's cards if he can guess how strong it is. Not only does Pegasus do so, he correctly identifies it as Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
- On One Condition: Pegasus makes the stakes simple. If Kaiba defeats him in duel, he will release Mokuba and his soul. But if he loses, Pegasus takes Kaiba's soul as well.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Yugi and his friends are taken aback when they see the normally unflappable Seto Kaiba look so shaken in his duel.
- Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Dark Rabbit takes out Saggi the Dark Clown with a flurry of punches.Joey: And I always thought a "rabbit punch" was a wimpy move.
- You Monster!: Kaiba said this to Pegasus when the latter wanted to use Mokuba's soulless body to operate his Duel Disk. Pegasus warned him that pity insults wouldn't get Mokuba's soul back.
